


Better Place, Better Time

by error404_happinessnotfound



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Veterans, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/error404_happinessnotfound/pseuds/error404_happinessnotfound
Summary: Hoseok has been waiting three years for his friend Hyungwon to come back home from military service, but when he returns, he's not quite the same person.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Better Place, Better Time

Hyungwon awoke with a groan to the chirping of birds and harsh bright light spearing through his window. It had rained every day for the past two weeks, which was a rather odd occurrence for the region, but the rain had cut off late last night. Hyungwon had opened the window for some fresh air and must have forgotten to close it before falling asleep.

He sat up and stared blankly at the bedsheets for a moment before standing up in one smooth motion and going over to the window. His new apartment was in a quieter part of town, and while there normally weren’t many people out at six in the morning, he saw several couples strolling along the street and basking in the unfamiliar sun.

A bird fluttered by, perhaps one of the ones that had woken him up. Although truthfully speaking, that wasn’t quite fair to the bird. Hyungwon would have woken up right about six anyway due to his years of training. But today, just for today, he wanted someone else to blame.

Hyungwon watched the last couple go by before he closed the window and drew the curtain. The room that had felt bright and alive for the first time in weeks immediately lost its rosy glow, and the walls seemed to move in a foot each. Still, there was enough light filtering in from behind the curtain to throw the barest illumination over the room, so Hyungwon continued on with his routine as per usual. He went over to the bed and pulled the sheets tight, smoothing them down and making sure there were no visible wrinkles. He turned the pillow over, and when he stepped back, it looked as though the bed had never been slept in.

He cast a brief glance to the duffel bag sitting near the foot of the bed. He’d kept it packed all this time, but it turned out that he would not need it after all.

And so Hyungwon turned back to the bed and opened the top drawer of the bedside table, the drawer that hotels usually set a Bible in. He didn’t pull out a Bible but instead a Beretta M9. He shut the drawer before ejecting the magazine and checking the chamber. He slapped the magazine back in with the palm of his hand and flicked off the safety.

He paused for a moment, looking around the room. It was hard to see with the dim grey lighting, but he didn’t want to turn on the florescent overhead lights either. His eyes trailed from one point to the next – the bed, his duffel, the closet – and when they didn’t come to rest on anything in particular, he gave a small, satisfied nod that there was nothing unresolved. He patted his chest pocket to remind himself of the letter he’d folded up and tucked inside.

Then he gave the Beretta a kiss and pulled the trigger.

\--

Three years. It had been three years since Hoseok had seen his former best friend. But every time Hyungwon’s unit had received leave, he’d never gotten off the bus. There was a shortage of pilots, which meant that Hyungwon and all the others were being run into the ground. Hoseok had wanted desperately to join them; he’d applied to enlist four times now, but always with the same result.

He was 4F on account of a minor heart condition. A heart condition that had never bothered him his whole life but was somehow enough to prevent him from joining the military.

And so Hyungwon had been drafted, and Hoseok had been rejected. He was darkly jealous of Hyungwon’s acceptance, but it didn’t prevent him from missing his friend.

So he waited at home with the private shame of public inadequacy and waited for the day when his friend would get off the bus and everything could go back to how it used to be.

What a wish that was.

\--

“Going over to Mrs. Chae’s?” Kihyun asked, looking up from his coffee at the kitchen table. They’d moved in together while most of their peers had gone off to fight in the war. Hoseok had stayed back on account of his 4F status, Kihyun on account of his parents having paid off his draft notice. While Hoseok occasionally despised Kihyun’s deep pockets, he couldn’t say so without being a hypocrite since Kihyun also paid the majority of their rent.

“Yeah,” Hoseok said, straightening his shirt. Ever since Hyungwon had been drafted, Hoseok had spent most Sunday mornings with Hyungwon’s mom because she complained of the house being too empty. Secretly, Hoseok just thought she needed someone to feed and care about, and while he felt somewhat uncomfortable at the thought of replacing Hyungwon’s presence even temporarily, he did it more for Mrs. Chae than for himself. He’d known her since he’d become friends with Hyungwon when they were kids, and he hated seeing her so lonely.

“I’ll be back in the afternoon,” Hoseok said. “Do you need anything while I’m out?”

“I don’t think so,” Kihyun said, lifting the mug to his lips and taking a sip. “But I’ll let you know if I think of anything.”

“All right, sounds good,” Hoseok said with a nod before heading out the door. He could make it to the Chae household in fifteen minutes at a brisk walk, and today was no exception, only he hadn’t checked the weather before leaving. It had been sunny when he’d first woken up as evidenced by his bedroom window, but the sky was turning grey. Rain couldn’t be far away. So he walked faster than normal, almost at a slow jog, and made it in ten minutes, just as the first raindrops were starting to fall.

He knocked at the door, thankful that the porch trim shielded him from the rain that was picking up pace exponentially, and after a minute, the door opened inward.

“Hoseok! Come in, come in,” Mrs. Chae said, moving out of the way and waving him through the door. “You know you don’t have to knock,” she said like she said every Sunday, and like always, Hoseok just gave her a bashful grin and entered.

Hoseok took a glance around while she shut the door behind him. Nothing in the house had changed over the past three years. The air was heavy with the burden of waiting. Of course, Hoseok knew that Mrs. Chae was waiting for Hyungwon to come home, but sometimes the thing you were waiting for wasn’t what it seemed to be. Hoseok wondered if the house was pausing for something else.

If anything, it reminded him of a held breath, as though the house had inhaled the last time Hyungwon had crossed over the threshold and out into the world, and it would finally exhale when he crossed back over the threshold. Something about it seemed suffocating.

Hoseok just gave a polite nod to Mrs. Chae and kept his feelings to himself as he followed her into the kitchen.

“I have a surprise for you,” Mrs. Chae said with a small smile as she went around the other side of the island.

Hoseok smiled obligingly. Mrs. Chae always made too much food, and he usually ended up helping her finish it off and taking some back to Kihyun. “What’s that, Ma’am?”

“Well it’s-”

The staircase in the front creaked as weight passed over the steps, and Hoseok tensed. Some of these older houses had stories of being haunted, and while Kihyun laughed all the stories off as ridiculous nonsense, Hoseok was a bit more willing to listen to superstition.

But it wasn’t a ghost, Hoseok saw as Hyungwon appeared in the kitchen doorway. Not the Hyungwon he remembered, but still Hyungwon.

“Here he is now,” Mrs. Chae said with a smile that seemed somehow too large for her face. She was a very pretty woman even at her age, but something about her expression was scary to Hoseok. Maybe it was the desperation so clearly lining her face, the need to present what she thought was a happy image. Because Hyungwon was finally home and that should have been the happy ending, but something told Hoseok that it wasn’t. Maybe it was the house, still holding its breath.

“I thought I heard voices,” Hyungwon said. His hair was cropped short to military specifications, which Hoseok knew had to have bothered him since Hyungwon had always kept it longer than normal in high school. And he was still way too fucking tall, which Hoseok had expected, but his thin shape was now accentuated with muscle. Even his voice was different...harsher, in a way. Hyungwon had been a “chronic mumbler,” as Mrs. Chae had termed it back when they’d been in high school. So many of his words had been lost to the wind or air because he’d been so quiet and hesitant to speak. But the hesitancy was gone now, and it made Hoseok sad.

“Hyungwon,” Hoseok said after a long moment of processing his presence. He stood up abruptly from the island barstool, hesitating to remember what the proper course of action was. A hug? Or did he want a handshake?

Neither, apparently, as Hyungwon slipped behind his mother and into the kitchen, grabbing something from the refrigerator. “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said.

“Hyungwon,” Hoseok said again, at a loss for words. He felt the same desperation that Mrs. Chae had displayed, desperation to be acknowledged, to receive the happy ending he’d been picturing for three years.

But Hyungwon just disappeared from the kitchen, never having met Hoseok’s eyes. Hoseok almost wondered if he had been an illusion, or a ghost. He slowly sank back down onto the barstool, his eyes still tracing the path Hyungwon had taken out of the room.

“He’s still adjusting,” Mrs. Chae said with a nervous laugh that scraped at Hoseok’s skin. It seemed to him like an apology was waiting on her lips, but she refused to utter it for fear of speaking poorly of Hyungwon. “It’s so wonderful that he’s finally home, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Hoseok said, forcing a smile of his own, but he didn’t know what he felt. Happy wasn’t it. He had always expected to feel happy, or at the very least, a sense of relief, but he felt worse than before, somehow. Seeing Hyungwon home, standing in the doorframe in his military fatigues...

Something about the picture was off from what he’d imagined.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me,” Hoseok said with an apologetic smile as he slid off the barstool.

“But- you haven’t even eaten,” Mrs. Chae said, one of her hands skittering over the counter. “I can- I’ll make you something, just-”

“Another time,” Hoseok said, more firmly this time, and her hand stopped.

“Oh. Right. Yes, another time. Next- next week? Will you come then?”

“I’ll try,” Hoseok said.

“That will be good,” Mrs. Chae said, more to herself than him, looking down as though compiling a mental checklist. “Yes, next week will work well. Hyungwon can join us next week. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“It would be,” Hoseok said, swallowing but finding his mouth dry. “I’ll try to be back next week then,” he said as he headed out of the kitchen, pausing at the base of the stairs, looking up and expecting Hyungwon to materialize, but of course he didn’t.

“All right,” Mrs. Chae said from the kitchen, her words growing closer as she followed after him. “Oh, but Hoseok! Isn’t it-”

Mrs. Chae paused at the door, finding the front room empty.

“-raining?”

\--

Hoseok walked through the rain. It was strange; he’d nearly jogged to avoid it earlier, but now, he let the drops hit him willingly. It wasn’t that the knowledge of the news didn’t bring him happiness; in his mind, the news that Hyungwon had finally received leave and possibly even discharge was wondrous. A long-awaited day.

And yet...

Something about it left an ugly taste in Hoseok’s mouth.

He stopped on the corner of a small intersection. There wasn’t a car or person in sight. It was the perfect place to just think for a moment.

But he found he couldn’t think. He found that he couldn’t _breathe_ – he was holding his breath, unable to let it go, waiting for something that should have come but hadn’t, waiting for – he wasn’t sure now, but he couldn’t let go, couldn’t let the wait shatter, had to just hold his breath and-

A car horn sounded nearby, and Hoseok gasped, sucking in air and half a mouthful of water. He coughed and choked, spitting out the water and breathing raggedly, a hand on his throat. He looked up to find red taillights blurring in the distance, but he was alone once more.

He didn’t stop again on the way home, just picked up his pace until he was through the door to their apartment.

\--

“Shit, Hoseok,” Kihyun said, doing a double take when he looked up to find his roommate soaked from head to toe. “What the hell? If you needed a ride, you should have just called me and I would have come and picked you up.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Hoseok said after a moment, looking dazed. “Sorry.”

“You’re freezing,” Kihyun observed after putting the back of his hand to Hoseok’s head. “Go take a hot shower,” he advised as he sat back down at the kitchen table, keeping a concerned eye on Hoseok.

“Sorry,” Hoseok said again, but he didn’t move.

“Hoseok?”

“Hyungwon’s back,” Hoseok said after a moment, trying to make sense of the news – and his reaction – himself.

“Hyungwon?” Kihyun’s eyebrows raised. “Your pilot friend?” He’d never met Hyungwon, but he’d heard about him several times from Hoseok.

“Yeah,” Hoseok said. “He’s back, but he wouldn’t...he wouldn’t even look at me. I don’t know if he even knew I was there.”

“That’s probably the PTSD and everything,” Kihyun said, his voice a little quieter now. He wasn’t an inherently gentle person, but there were times he knew he had to be softer with Hoseok, and this felt like one of them. “Just give him some time. He’s probably got a lot going on in his head right now.”

“I know that, it’s just...” Hoseok blew out a breath, suddenly feeling the chill seeping in through his skin and down to his bones. He wrapped his arms around himself tighter, the thought of a hot shower beginning to sound more and more attractive. “It’s just that I’ve waited three years for him to come home. I’ve waited all this time, and then he shows up and ignores me in his own fucking kitchen.”

“Just because someone means the world to you doesn’t mean the opposite is true,” Kihyun said, still trying to sound gentle despite the harsh reality of his words. “But he’s probably still adjusting. Just give him time.”

“That’s what his mom said,” Hoseok mumbled.

“And she’s right,” Kihyun said. “Just- go, take a hot shower, and we’ll watch a funny movie afterward. I’ll make some popcorn. It’ll be fun.”

“All right,” Hoseok said after a moment since it was the answer of least resistance, but even as he stepped into the shower, the hot water burning at his skin but failing to eliminate the cold that had spread throughout his body, he still pictured Hyungwon’s cold eyes and absent gaze.

He wondered when his friend would come home for real.

\--

“What?”

The house still had the discomforting aura of an unmet expectancy, but it was even more at odds with his reality than last time.

“He moved out,” Mrs. Chae said, another anxious smile popping up on her face as she kept her hands busy on the counter. “It’s not a big deal. He’s an adult now, and he said he needed space.”

Hoseok didn’t know what to say. He’d gotten up this morning, a week after he’d first seen Hyungwon, hoping that he’d be able to resolve everything – all his questions and unanswered emotions – if he’d just be able to see Hyungwon again, only to find that he’d moved out of his mother’s house in the seven days he’d been back.

“It’s not a big deal,” Mrs. Chae said again. She reminded Hoseok of a recorder, looping back over the same words and phrases that had originally come from someone else’s mouth. “He said he needed space. Not a big deal.”

“I...I was hoping to see him today,” Hoseok confessed after a moment. “To...talk for a bit. Do you think he’d mind if I visited him?”

One of Mrs. Chae’s hands went up to her cheek, rubbing at the skin there. “Visit? No, I think...I think that would be good for him...Yes, that would be...Yes, why don’t you- how about you go and visit him? That would be nice. That would be good for him, I think.”

“Where is he living now?”

“In an apartment on the outskirts of town,” Mrs. Chae said. “He’s an adult, he needs space, so...” She gave a short, decisive nod. “Yes, that would be good of you to visit...I have a key,” she said after a moment, going over to the wall by the refrigerator where a calendar was hung up on top of several older calendars. Hoseok noticed that the last few days remained void of crosses as though they’d escaped from her somehow. Beside the calendar was a key hanging from a lone nail, and she took the key from the wall and held it in her palm for a moment. “He gave me a spare,” she explained. “In case I...well, he said to give him some space, but if I were to visit. But you can borrow the key.”

She held it out to Hoseok in an open palm, and he looked at it for a moment before looking up, biting at the inside of his cheek. “Does he not want people to visit?”

“He...” She hesitated, her eyes working around the room nervously, skipping from one object to another. “He just needs some space, is all. But- you wanted to talk with him, and that would be good for him, I think, so why don’t you visit and...and see how he’s doing. If he needs anything.”

Hoseok reached out and took the key, having half a minute to just take an hour-long walk and return the key, but Mrs. Chae was already moving over to the refrigerator.

“And maybe- maybe you could take some leftovers. If you wouldn’t mind. I just worry that he’s not eating enough, and...if you could take some over-”

“Sure thing, Ma’am,” Hoseok said, and she sighed in relief before unloading several plastic containers onto the counter.

“Let me know if he has any requests,” she said, tucking some loose strands of hair behind her ears as she arranged and rearranged the containers.

“Will do,” Hoseok promised, scooping up the Tupperware with one arm and heading for the door, the air starting to make him nauseous.

Mrs. Chae followed him to the door, making several other requests of Hoseok to see how Hyungwon was doing and to see if he was looking well and if he was eating enough. Hoseok finally made it out the door and punched the address in on his phone.

It would take half an hour to walk, and Hoseok briefly debated calling Kihyun up for a ride since the food needed to be refrigerated, but he decided against it in the end and started walking. From what he’d gathered, Hyungwon seemed to prefer privacy right now, and dragging Kihyun into everything couldn’t help.

Half an hour later, he stopped in front of a sad-looking apartment complex of ten units, five wide and two high, plus a main office. Mrs. Chae had told him unit six, so Hoseok took the stairs up and stopped at the first unit on the second level. He knocked and waited; he had the key, so he could just go in, but it felt intrusive. He only wanted to use the key if Hyungwon was out so he could drop off the food.

But the door opened a minute later, revealing Hyungwon, hair still cut to military specification, still dressed in his fatigues, face still hollow in a way it hadn’t been three years ago.

“Hyungwon,” Hoseok said with false cheer. He thought that maybe if he had enough energy for the both of them, they could get through this.

But Hyungwon’s eyes searched Hoseok’s, boring into him, and his false energy fell away. “Why are you here?”

“To...” Hoseok had endless reasons, in theory. To talk, to make sense of why he was feeling so lost and apprehensive about Hyungwon’s return, to find out why Hyungwon had changed and whether or not he was still _Hyungwon_. But all that came out was, “To drop off food.”

He gestured to the Tupperware under his arm, and Hyungwon’s face twitched involuntarily.

“From my mom?”

“Yeah,” Hoseok said. More silence.

Hyungwon made no move to take the food, but Hoseok made no move to leave. They were stuck in a stalemate. Of course, Hyungwon could always close the door, but Hoseok still had a key.

“I thought...”

They both tensed as Hoseok struggled to find the right words to say everything that he needed to say.

“I thought that you’d come home,” he said after a moment, looking down before looking back up to search Hyungwon’s face. “But you haven’t come home. Not really, right?”

Hyungwon twitched again, and after a long moment of silence, he disappeared back into the apartment. Hoseok took the open door as an invitation, and he followed Hyungwon in, shutting it softly behind him.

The room was nearly bare. The bed was made, the curtains drawn to reveal a single window. A duffel sat at the foot of the bed. But no other objects or knickknacks littered the space. Even the kitchenette was nearly bare. Even though Hyungwon had only just moved in, Hoseok got the distinct impression that he wasn’t planning to redecorate much at all.

Hyungwon was sitting on the bed, elbows resting on his knees, looking down at the floor. Hoseok hesitated before setting the Tupperware on the table, ignoring the fridge for now.

“I’m sorry.” Hyungwon’s words came sharp but also soft. Not hesitant, not fading at the edges, but not bold, either. Hoseok didn’t know quite how to read it. “I’m sorry that I can’t- that I don’t-” He fell silent.

“That you can’t what?” Hoseok asked after a moment. He felt like sitting on the bed would be intrusive, so he just stood awkwardly, looking down on his friend.

“That I can’t be what you and Mom want me to be,” Hyungwon mumbled after a moment, and for just a second, Hoseok felt a sincere sense of relief that Hyungwon – _his_ Hyungwon – hadn’t been lost after all. But his words were concerning enough to dispel the momentary relief.

“What- what is it that you think we need you to be?” Hoseok asked, swallowing.

“I don’t know,” Hyungwon said after a moment before a small pause. “Here. Whole. A friend. A son.”

Hoseok didn’t know what to make of the disjointed phrases, didn’t know how to fix Hyungwon so that he didn’t sound so empty while he said them. “Then what are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Hyungwon repeated after a moment, only this time, there were no following attempts at identification.

“It’s okay to feel lost,” Hoseok said. He wanted to sit down, even on the floor, but he felt like any movement might snap Hyungwon out of their conversation. He couldn’t risk that, so he stayed as still as possible.

“I’m not lost,” Hyungwon denied after a moment. “I know where I am, and I know where I should be. The issue is that those don’t align. Not anymore.”

“Where should you be?” Hoseok asked even though he already knew that Hyungwon could only be referring to the military.

“Dead.”

The word was blunt, cold, too short of a word to create the resulting dread and yet it did, somehow. “Dead?” All Hoseok could do was repeat it.

“Jooheon is dead, Hyunwoo is dead, Minhyuk is dead, Changkyun is dead, so yes, I should also be dead,” Hyungwon said, his fists clenched and shaking violently between his knees.

“But you’re not dead,” Hoseok said, breathing evenly, trying to remain calm. He wasn’t trained to handle this. All he could do was try to work through it, but he felt like there were a million ways to go wrong. “You’re not dead, and there’s got to be a reason for that, right? You’re lucky-”

“I’m not lucky,” Hyungwon snapped. “If I were lucky, our plane never would have taken off. Hell, if our luck was even just neutral, we would have been fine. But I’m not lucky, and our plane took off and we _weren’t_ fine, so if I can’t be dead, then I need to go back.”

“Go back and do what?” Hoseok asked.

“Go back and keep flying,” Hyungwon said, looking up like Hoseok’s question was ridiculous. “They need more pilots. They can’t just send me home. They need me.”

“Hyungwon, you served for three years,” Hoseok said, rubbing at his knuckles. When he was a kid, his father had given him a lucky quarter that he’d salvaged from his own military exploits, and he’d told Hoseok that he could rub it for good luck. When his father’s leave had ended and he was called back, Hoseok rubbed the quarter almost constantly, trying to wish luck onto his father, to bring him home safely again. He nearly wore the face off it, rubbing on it all day.

A few months later, they received the news that his father had died in a military operation, and Hoseok hadn’t bothered rubbing the coin since. He didn’t believe in luck, truth be told. Things happened or they didn’t. Rubbing on a coin wouldn’t change anything.

But he still found the action calming in a way, even if he didn’t believe in the magic anymore. So he rubbed at his knuckles, trying to just understand Hyungwon.

“Three years,” Hyungwon agreed. “Three years of finally having a purpose, of having people who needed me and relied on me. And now what?” He laughed, but it was an empty sound, a cold sound. Laughter but not laughter. Laughter but sadness. “What do I have now?”

“You have me, and your mom.” The words weren’t an empty promise, but somehow, they didn’t sit well on the air.

“I didn’t fuck up,” Hyungwon said abruptly.

“What?”

He looked up at Hoseok, his gaze impossibly intense. “I didn’t fuck it up. It wasn’t me. I told them there was something wrong with the plane, but they didn’t listen. They told me to fuel up and take off. I told them-” He made a horrible noise, a choking, gasping noise that sounded to Hoseok like screams unvoiced. “I told them something was wrong, and they didn’t listen.”

Hoseok flinched as Hyungwon pounded a fist against the bed. The sound itself was soft since the mattress muffled the blow, but the silence became louder somehow, the rain against the window fading into white noise.

“They didn’t fucking listen because the engineer was the son of some big fucking politician and so of course they wouldn’t trust my words on it even though it was my fucking plane and my fucking-” Again, that choking sound. This time, though, Hyungwon took a moment to breathe, and when he spoke again, he was quieter, calmer but still not okay. “Those were my fucking brothers on that plane, and my brothers that died when that fucking engineer wouldn’t listen to me.”

He looked up at Hoseok, his eyes wet, his face wet, the angles hard but open in a way. Hyungwon wanted, _needed_ Hoseok to look at him in this moment. “I didn’t fuck it up,” Hyungwon repeated, pleading now. “They’re going to say I fucked it up and crashed the plane but I- I didn’t fuck it up, it wasn’t me, I was- I was flying like normal and the plane fucked _us_. That’s all it was. I didn’t...”

Sobbing now. Running his hands over his shorn hair, looking for something to latch onto, to grab, to tear, to rip.

“You didn’t fuck it up,” Hoseok repeated in Hyungwon’s words, finally stepping over to the bed and easing himself down next to Hyungwon. He knew that if he tried to pat Hyungwon’s shoulder or back that the other would lash out at him, either verbally or physically, so he didn’t cross the physical distance between them but just stayed close. “It wasn’t your fault, Hyungwon,” Hoseok said next because that’s what it sounded like Hyungwon needed to hear. Hoseok didn’t know jack shit about planes, but if Hyungwon said he didn’t do it, then Hoseok was inclined to believe him.

He didn’t know anything about planes, but he knew a lot about Hyungwon.

“I killed them,” Hyungwon said abruptly, his eyes staring blankly at the wall ahead of them. “They’re dead because of me.”

“They’re gone because the plane failed,” Hoseok corrected. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I’m here and they’re not,” Hyungwon said, and Hoseok couldn’t exactly argue with that. “I should have refused to fuel up. I should have protested more. Then they wouldn’t be dead.”

“Then they just would have found another pilot,” Hoseok said. “You don’t know that anything would have turned out differently.”

“That’s why I have to go back,” Hyungwon said, his voice almost feverish now. “More people are going to die unless I go back, unless I check the planes and make sure that they’re going to be safe.”

“People are going to die no matter what,” Hoseok whispered. “That’s war. Whether you’re there or not. Going back won’t bring your friends back, Hyungwon. They’re gone.”

“I know,” Hyungwon said, then again, louder, “I _know_.” He exhaled unsteadily, his breathing ragged. “I know that, but...I need...I need to be _there_. I can’t be _here_.”

And Hoseok couldn’t selfishly argue that he needed Hyungwon to be _here_ , that he’d been waiting three years for him to return.

“Okay,” Hoseok said simply after an eternity of silence. There was no other way for him to respond and still keep his friendship with Hyungwon. He could get angry, he could get self-righteous, but none of that was worth losing this fragile connection. Maybe, if he stayed with Hyungwon enough and listened to him enough, he could make him forget about _there_ and be _here_ instead.

And so they sat in silence while the plastic containers grew condensation, and they both wished for different things.

\--

The next time Hoseok saw Hyungwon was half a week later in town. Hoseok had been planning to hit the gym, but his plans changed when he saw a tall man in fatigues exit the hardware shop.

“Hey,” Hoseok called out as he approached, waving to flag Hyungwon down.

Hyungwon looked over, brown paper bag held to his side with one arm. “Hey.”

“Whatcha got there?” Hoseok asked, nodding to the bag as he stopped on the sidewalk.

Hyungwon glanced down at the bag as though he hadn’t even registered that he’d been holding it. “Home improvement project,” he said after a beat before looking back up at Hoseok. “Where are you heading?”

“The bakery,” Hoseok said, remembering the days when they’d gone to the bakery together after school to collect any pastries they were going to throw away at closing. “Hey, do you- do you want to come with?”

A small smile alit on Hyungwon’s lips as he too recalled the days when they were kids, too young to understand the toll of warfare. But then his face fell abruptly.

“Hyungwon?”

“No, I’d rather not,” he said after a moment, his voice low and even but pained for reasons Hoseok couldn’t understand.

“Hyungwon? What-”

“I’ll see you around,” he said curtly before turning and walking away.

Hoseok hesitated, wanting to run after him and figure out what he’d said wrong, but he decided that maybe he’d just give Hyungwon some space and ask him about it later.

\--

“Hi, Ma’am,” Hoseok said, respectfully inclining his head and holding up a bakery bag. “I realized I forgot to return the key you lent me, and I brought you some fresh rolls since it was on my way.”

“Oh, Hoseok, that’s too kind, you didn’t have to do that,” Mrs. Chae said. “But actually, if it’s not too much trouble...”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Would you mind taking over a few more leftovers to Hyungwon?”

Hoseok froze, remembering their brief but cold interaction earlier and his decision to give Hyungwon some time to himself. “Ma’am, I-”

“I just need to know he’s eating all right. You understand, don’t you? I just need to be sure that he’s all right.”

“...All right.”

\--

Despite his earlier intentions, Hoseok found himself once more walking leftovers to Hyungwon’s apartment. The key weighed heavily in his pocket as he walked, a burden he hadn’t been able to return, and a few raindrops fell on his shoulder at random from the grey but uncertain sky overhead. He would just drop off the food and leave. He didn’t want to bother Hyungwon if he wasn’t feeling well today.

But when he knocked on the door to unit six, no one answered.

“Hyungwon?” Hoseok called, frowning. He’d thought Hyungwon would be back by now, but there was no helping it if he was still out. He sighed before setting down the Tupperware and pulling the key out of his pocket. He slid the key into the lock and pushed the door open with his hip, intending to pick up the food and bring it inside, but he stopped once he saw Hyungwon.

“Fuck,” Hoseok said, forgetting the food outside as he rushed into the apartment and looked around for something sharp. He began ripping open kitchen drawers until he found the knives, and he dragged one of the kitchen chairs deeper into the apartment. Moving quickly, he climbed on top of the chair and started sawing at the rope, cursing his slow progress, but the rope grew thinner and thinner until it snapped, and Hyungwon fell to the floor with a dull thud.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Hoseok said, hopping down from the chair and turning Hyungwon over. Hyungwon was unconscious but taking sputtering breaths, so Hoseok grabbed his cell phone and dialed the emergency line.

Two minutes later, an ambulance arrived to take Hyungwon to the hospital.

\--

“His condition has stabilized,” the nurse informed Hoseok. Having no car of his own, he’d ridden along in the ambulance and had supplied as much of Hyungwon’s medical information as he could. “You reached him in time to prevent permanent brain damage. We’re going to keep him overnight just to monitor his condition, but it looks like he’s going to come out of this just fine. You’re welcome to stay overnight if you’d like, or you can-”

“I’ll stay,” Hoseok said quickly, and the nurse nodded. “Is he...is he awake? Can I talk to him?”

“He just came to a few minutes ago,” the nurse said. “You’re welcome to stay in his room tonight if you’re all right with sleeping in a chair. And I should warn you that there’s a chance that he won’t remember the incident.”

“You mean...he won’t...”

“He’ll still remember everything except the hanging itself. It’s a form of retrograde amnesia that we see in fair amount of these cases. I’m not saying it’s certain that he’ll display these symptoms, but I wanted to let you know in advance.”

“Thank you,” Hoseok said before she nodded and left to go break bad news to someone else, and he went into Hyungwon’s room to find him propped up on top of several pillows, an IV drip in his arm and his heart beating along to the beeping of a machine.

“Hey,” Hoseok said because he didn’t know what to say. He’d never had a friend try to kill himself. And he’d never stopped anyone from committing suicide before. He felt angry, and scared, and a little bit guilty too because maybe it hadn’t been his decision to make.

“Hey,” Hyungwon mumbled back.

They were quiet.

“Do you remember what happened?” Hoseok asked after finally being unable to avoid the question.

“Yeah,” Hyungwon said, and Hoseok sighed in relief. “At least up until I lost consciousness.”

Hoseok took a seat beside Hyungwon’s bedside. “Hyungwon...why?”

“Because oxygen stopped flowing to my brain.”

“Not- not why did you lose consciousness.”

“I know,” Hyungwon said after a moment with a small smile that said he’d found his joke funny despite the circumstances. But the smile faded away. “Why did you stop me?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hoseok said, feeling his fear overpower the other emotions for the moment. That first moment of panic when he’d opened the door to see Hyungwon hanging from the ceiling, eyelids fluttering, limbs twitching spastically. It was a horrifying image, one he couldn’t quite get out of his head. He needed to stay here and talk with Hyungwon, if only to rid himself of that horrible image. “Was I supposed to let you just dangle from the ceiling?”

“How did you even know?” Hyungwon said, sounding tired. “How did you even fucking know?”

“Your mom packed some more leftovers for you,” Hoseok said, and to his surprise, Hyungwon squeezed his eyes shut, tears beginning to roll down his cheeks.

“No more fucking leftovers,” he cried out, hands twisting in the bedsheets.

“Hyungwon, what’s wrong?” Hoseok asked, standing in response to Hyungwon’s distress.

“You can’t let her send over any more food,” Hyungwon said, eyes still squeezed shut.

“Tell me why,” Hoseok said, wanting like before to just understand.

“Because,” Hyungwon said after a moment, hands relaxing in the sheets but leaving behind mountains and valleys as a witness to his pain. “I can’t taste a fucking thing. And she keeps sending- keeps sending me all this food, and I don’t...I don’t have the heart to tell her to stop, but she...and...”

The tears came down harder, and Hyungwon bent forward over the sheets. “All I can smell is burning flesh, Hoseok. That’s all. I can still smell it from the crash, and I can’t- I can’t get it out of my head, can’t eat, can’t taste anything because it’s always there. If I try eating something, I smell the burning flesh and it tastes like I’m eating- like I’m eating _them_ and I-”

More broken sobbing punctuated by ranting and mumbling. And Hoseok just listened and nodded, keeping watch at Hyungwon’s side until he’d ranted and cried himself back to sleep.

\--

Kihyun picked them up in the morning and dropped Hyungwon back off at his apartment. Hoseok went in with him, unscrewed the hook on the ceiling, and removed the rope. He took the equipment back to the car; even though he knew that Hyungwon could just buy it again, he didn’t want to leave it nearby. If Hyungwon wanted to kill himself, then the least Hoseok could do was not make it easy for him.

He left after promising Hyungwon that he wouldn’t tell his mom what had happened, and Hyungwon had thanked Hoseok and cried.

“He gonna be okay?” Kihyun asked, eyes flicking to the rope in the backseat before looking over at Hoseok.

“I hope so,” Hoseok said with a long sigh. It was strange; he’d felt jealous of Hyungwon for years for having been deemed adequate for service when Hoseok hadn’t, but he felt none of that jealousy right now. He was starting to think that maybe _he_ had been the lucky one, that maybe rubbing the quarter had worked, just not in a way he’d expected.

“A lot of vets attempt suicide,” Kihyun said quietly as he drove. “But once he finds his purpose again, he’ll be okay. He’s just adjusting.”

How many times had Hoseok heard that now?

“Yeah,” he agreed nonetheless because he didn’t know what else to say. That it was okay if Hyungwon had attempted suicide because a lot of people did? That sounded like a shitty reason to him.

He sighed at the raindrops on the windshield. It had rained today and yesterday too, every day since Hyungwon had gotten home, actually. Almost two weeks of straight rain. Unprecedented.

It was easy to tell himself that it was the weather that had Hyungwon down. But Hoseok knew better than that.

Still, the rain didn’t help.

\--

Hoseok stared at the letter in his hands, the one Hyungwon had handed to him silently when he’d entered the apartment the next day. He’d had plans to return the key to Mrs. Chae, but he’d thought that he’d better hang onto it for now. He didn’t want Mrs. Chae to be the one to walk in and discover that something horrific had happened to her son. If anyone had to do that, then Hoseok would. That was a promise he’d made to himself.

“Dishonorable discharge,” Hoseok read aloud at the top of the letter, and Hyungwon flinched at the words. The letter itself had been folded many times despite being delivered earlier today, and the crinkles were already worn.

“I told you,” he mumbled. “I told you they’d say I fucked it up. But it wasn’t me.”

“I know it wasn’t you,” Hoseok said, but the words didn’t hold the same weight they had earlier.

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me,” Hyungwon said. “What matters is they won’t let me back in with a dishonorable discharge.” His hands clenched and unclenched, and he eyed the duffel at the foot of his bed with apprehension.

That sounded...great to Hoseok. Knowing that Hyungwon was grounded firmly in the _here_. But judging from the tension in Hyungwon’s frame, it wasn’t the desired outcome. “This is okay,” Hoseok said. “I know it sounds bad, but...this will give you some time to rest and recover from all that. To adjust.”

He cringed to hear the phrase coming out of his own mouth, but Hyungwon just kept quiet.

“Hyungwon?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Hyungwon said, looking down at the ground blankly.

Hoseok restrained his smile. “It’s going to be okay, Hyungwon. I know it’ll take some time for you to...get used to everything...but then everything can go back to how it used to be.”

_I’m sorry that I can’t be what you and Mom want me to be. Here. Whole. A friend. A son._

_Those were my fucking brothers on that plane._

_All I can smell is burning flesh._

_I’m not lost. know where I am, and I know where I should be._

So not everything would go back to normal, Hoseok knew that. Hyungwon had changed. Hoseok hadn’t changed much, he didn’t think, but Hyungwon had changed enough for the both of them. But it would be okay. Like Kihyun said, he just needed a little time. A lot of veterans went through something like this with the PTSD and depression. Hyungwon just needed time and purpose.

“We’ll find something for you to do,” Hoseok decided. “It’s no plane of war, but there’s a place near here that takes kids out for rides on crop dusters. Maybe we could find a way to get you a job there.”

Hyungwon was quiet for a long moment, and Hoseok realized that maybe Hyungwon didn’t want to fly anymore, but then he just smiled and said, “That would be nice.”

Hoseok smiled in shaky relief, and he talked a little more of all the things they could do in the _here_ , and Hyungwon was quiet except for an occasional nod or smile.

After a while, Hoseok headed back out into the rain, staring up at the grey sky wondering if it would ever let up, before beginning the jog home.

Hyungwon had come back. One way or another, whether he’d wanted to or not, Hyungwon was firmly _here_ now.

That was entirely relieving to Hoseok.

He planned on stopping by Mrs. Chae’s tomorrow to drop off the Tupperware Hyungwon had handed him on the way out. He didn’t know whether or not Hyungwon had eaten any of the food, but the containers were empty one way or another. He was also curious to see if the house had reached the same revelation that he had, that maybe it would feel as though the house had finally exhaled.

\--

Hoseok accidentally slept in and didn’t awake until almost eleven in the morning. He rubbed at his eyes and slowly tipped the balance between sleep and consciousness, and after five or so minutes of savoring the last warm embraces of his sheets, he rolled out of bed and immediately stubbed his toe on his nightstand.

He swore, falling down and flailing as his other foot got caught in the sheets, but he was able to right himself after a moment. He glared first at the nightstand and then at the sheets before going over to the window and sighing, preparing himself for another day of grey sky.

But he was greeted instead with glorious sunlight, and he fumbled with the latches on his window before he was able to get it open and feel the sun on his face. He took a deep breath; the city still held the after-scent of rain, that damp earthy petrichor, but he could smell the sun and light, too. He laughed, his soul feeling cleansed by the change of weather, and he smiled as several birds flew past his window, clearly just as excited as he. He’d felt so heavy these past few weeks, but the heaviness was gone now.

Hoseok turned and ignored the messy pile of bedsheets; he could make the bed later. Or, better yet, turn today into laundry day and wash them so he didn’t have to straighten them out. His laziness often propelled him to expend extra effort like that.

Still, there was something in the air that just excited him. He felt whole again.

Maybe, after he’d done the laundry and gotten something to eat, he’d stopped by Hyungwon’s and see if he was enjoying the weather as well.

That would be nice.


End file.
